A 'glitch' left young people off jury rolls - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/10/us/baton-rouge-jury-glitch.html <comment><USER2> Meanwhile I (a foreigner who has to report every change of address I make) continue to be selected for jury duty and then reply again with "dude I'm a foreigner"

<comment><USER3> I can see a reason for it to be the way it (ICE having possible access to a database of foreigners on US soil), but I agree that dealing with repeated problems like this one is exasperating. I think Selective Service does the same thing (occasionally asking foreigners to enlist for US military service by accident).

<comment><USER4> >occasionally asking foreigners to enlist for US military service

Only if there is a draft.

<comment><USER2> Draft isn't asking, so maybe it's periodic "hey would you like to be in the army?"

<comment><USER5> Registering for selective service isn't being drafted, it's adding you name to the registry of those eligible to be drafted, if needed.

US males aged 18-25 are compelled to register, under penalty. You must also update the agency in event you move. Despite a recent US SCOTUS ruling that only requiring males to register is unconstitutional, the agency stands by the law as written. See "STATEMENT ON RECENT COURT CASES PERTAINING TO WOMEN AND SELECTIVE SERVICE REGISTRATION" at [1]

Selective service also has nothing to do with Jury duty - thats normally driven by voter registration as it tends to be one the most accurate records of who lives in a jurisdiction.

I've been of voting age for more than half my life now, and I've yet to be summoned. :shrug:

[1] [https://www.sss.gov/](https://www.sss.gov/)

<comment><USER2> Sorry, I was unclear -- what I was trying to say is, if you're registered for selective service couldn't that result in the various military sending you "hey, do you want to join the <insert service here>"?

I wasn't a permanent resident during the age window for selective service, so I can't speak to any of the selective service rules, just my unceasing jury summons :D

<comment><USER5> In my experience, no. I was recruited as I was graduating high school, but after I declined the Navy after finding out the recruiter was lying to me, never heard from any branch again. (I was being recruited for ROTC) I can't say if my experience is typical or not, but I don't think the selective service is allowed to act as a directory for spamming for recruits. It's there as the registry for the lottery that the draft becomes, if enacted.

<comment><USER2> Ok, what is it the recruiter lie about (given this is a theme, and I've never been actively recruited, I would pity the military service that wanted someone with my vision and coordination :) )

<comment><USER5> Basically, the recruiter promised I'd being doing work in my destined field (was studying electrical engineering) during summers off from school. When I was on campus for a scholarship interview, the officer there in charge of the ROTC program chuckled and told me straight faced something along the lines of "no, you'll be swabbing decks until you graduate."

So, I opted to go the self paid route. Figured after that I couldn't trust anything.

After scholarships and a little financial help from my parents, I graduated in 2003 with about 15k in loans on a 120k priced 4-year education with a dual BSEE and BSCPE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> As compensation they should increase the probability of them being called by 10x for the next few years.

<comment><USER7> If the goal of a jury is to be unbiased toward the person on trial (attempt equal representation from the citizenry), wouldn't biasing the selection now violate the right of the defendant to trial by jury of peers as much as the instance in question? We would do well to remember that the objective of jury selection is not to give all groups equal representation simply for the sake of fairness but to give the defendant a fair, unbiased jury for a trial.

It wouldn't be fair to today's defendants to do this, just as some sort of "justice" for those of yesterday.

<comment><USER6> The defendants who were previously found guilty under the old jury selection can ask for a second trial under this new jury. Any the young people who were deprived of jury duty also get a chance.

<comment><USER7> A jury that is 10x more likely to have youth? Not necessarily any more just. That's not right either. Couldn't we just strive for a just jury?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This doesn't seem purposeful. It seems like someone finding confirmation bias because a group more likely to identify with their beliefs has been partially left out (in this case).

At least for the "anti-black" case mentioned, here's the case itself: [https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-6th- circuit/1604783.html](https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-6th-circuit/1604783.html)

Reading over the technical part, it seems like an honest mistake. Who's to say everyone doesn't end up affected at some point or another? I agree we always ought to minimize such errors, but they're arguably better than the human alternative (against which many accusations of various biases have been leveled).

I think we're more likely to find examples of this because the normal cases (where minority groups aren't affected) aren't litigated as widely.

<comment><USER3> Now that there is evidence that this sort of thing can happen, it should be a responsibility of the justice system to have regular audits in place to ensure that it stops happening.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I'm surprised at how few times I've been summonsed. Once in Miami when I was maybe 20 and made it to voir dire but was dismissed. Once in Santa Clara, CA but never got to voir dire, and twice in Raleigh, NC but when I called the night before was told I wasn't needed. So I've basically only ever even been interviewed once. I'm 47. I'll probably have a summons waiting for me in the mail tomorrow.

<comment><USER9> I've been called for jury duty almost every year since I was 20 (I'm in my late 20s now). It's a frustrating waste of time considering how much lawyers hate engineers being on the jury.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> What would be the penalty for the company and the state government in this case?

<comment><USER10> For a penalty to be appropriate we'd need to be able to identify a harm to someone. That's a stretch in this case, I think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> It took defense attorneys years to figure this out?

<comment><USER12> You must not know much about public defenders offices, in general they are under funded, and undermanned, and it isn't like there is anyone monitoring the jury composition of every case in the state at any given time.

The problem is compounded by youth being the number one group of people who naturally aren't called for jury duty. You have to be registered to vote, or have a drivers lisc. to even be in the pot to be selected as a possible.

Young people tend to move around a lot more than other segments of the population, so even if they are called, they may no longer be reachable at the address the state has for them, or they have moved out of state entirely and are no longer eligible to be seated.

Many youth, don't have access to reliable transportation to get them to a courthouse even if they are on one of the two list mentioned above.

They are also in one of the largest groups of people, who just flat out refuse to show up.

You also can't be a felon, you have to be literate, and able to read/write/speak English (This is in Louisiana law.) and considering that Louisiana has roughly a 25% youth illiteracy rate.

So it isn't really difficult to see, how this could be overlooked.

And honestly, there isn't a chance in hell that a defense attorney noticed this, and more likely one of the many justice reform groups in Louisiana that found this, or received a tip about the issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been called once in a decade of being elegable. Seems I should be able to calculate the odds of that happening</comment>


Show HN: CTOnet, a private community for CTOs and engineering leaders - <AUTHOR> https://ctonet.io/about <comment><USER2> Someone here asked HN about where to find CTO / Head of Engineering blogs and an informative discussion revealed some good resources, especially books:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19973875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19973875)

</comment><comment><USER3> Hi, Burak - are you just launching this or do you already have people participating?

<comment><AUTHOR> Just launching. I'm going to fill up the first batch and run just that one for a while. If it's working well I'll start opening up more batches.

I'm hoping for the first batch to include 3 people I know personally, plus a dozen brand-new friends.

<comment><USER3> Sweet - looks like you're in NYC - I'm just across the river in NJ.

Definitely wish you the best of luck, and would be really interested to hear what kind of interest you receive ... have a possibly similar idea in the works, but not necessarily directed at CTOs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Fantastic idea and very cool to see, I'd love to hear how it goes as you get going. Reminds me of Vistage/EO but for CTOs a bit.

<comment><AUTHOR> So far so good, already have enough applicants to fill Batch #1!

<comment><USER4> awesome :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> What forum software are you using?

<comment><AUTHOR> I custom built it in node. It's a straightforward forum, except with the private groups feature, some modtools for this specific use-case, saving items, and elasticsearch-powered fulltext.

Its best feature is that it _doesn 't_ use React or a fancy frontend. It's just server-side rendered, very lightweight, and lightning fast. Still nice and usable though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> lol. didn't angel list start off as something like this? it's an itsy bitsy tiny market, even if every cto joined. personally, the domain sounds pretentious and douchy, and as a cto i would not want to join simply because it sets the wrong impression that "i'm better than you and you are not qualifed to discuss real matters with me - also, as CTO, rest assured I'm only transparent with folks 'at my level', although our company promises transparency to everyone".

also, i could fake those credentials in a heart beat.

just my 2cents, good luck with it though.

<comment><AUTHOR> Market size isn't a consideration here.. I just like building communities and getting people to help each other. When you're talking about small groups of a dozen people, it doesn't matter so much if there's only 100 or a million in the world.

And I'm certainly open to suggestions on the domain, if you have any ideas!

<comment><USER7> How about a mentee program for prospective engineering leaders to learn from those in those positions. There's a huge gap in mentorship for this kind of skill set. I can easily find people to teach me the tech side of things, finding information and wisdom on the leadership side has major barriers, in my experience, and a very high noise to signal ratio for finding this info without direction from a mentor.

<comment><USER8> I'm in the process of building something currently, it will be an online course teaching the basics + mentor/mentee/general career advice forum.

Feel free to email me: email@example.com w/ any specific questions, I am happy to help (I am currently in a leadership role in the high frequency trading industry).</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Hitting send on the next 15 years of Gmail - <AUTHOR> https://www.blog.google/products/gmail/hitting-send-on-the-next-15-years-of-gmail/ <comment><USER2> > _You could also store 1GB of data for free—nearly 100 times what was > available at the time._

"You could also store 1GB of data in exchange for letting us read your emails and build an Ad profile based on everything you do in Gmail – nearly 100 times what was available at the time, because no one else dared to do something similar and had no means to profit from this data."

Privacy-aware folks, it's time to move on if you haven't done already.

<comment><USER3> 1GB was an enormous amount at the time. There were even applications out there that let to mount gmail as a drive, as a sort of free proto-dropbox

<comment><USER4> I used it to back up some old code in a .zip file; unfortunately, even though the email is still there, Google isn't letting me download it because it may contain malicious code according to them (probably .js files).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Still lightly salted they killed off Inbox, but at least they rolled most of its useful features back into Gmail.

<comment><USER6> Inbox. Sigh, it really feels like inbox users were sold a bill of goods by the CEO of Google ([https://gmail.googleblog.com/2014/10/an-inbox-that-works- for...](https://gmail.googleblog.com/2014/10/an-inbox-that-works-for- you.html)) and for five years with no directive otherwise, most of us committed to a product that certainly wasn't free (my data is for sale because I used this tool). Today, I open their app which my data paid for and I'm greeted with a giant middle finger.

Something seems wrong. Some random PM didn't promise me this product. The CEO did. This relationship with a giant service provider (Google) feels more like the relationship I loathe with the average monopolizing telecom. I've been taken advantage of and my commitment in the end to this, as I learn, unclear experiment has generated enormous benefits for Google and today results in a frustrating realisation that I wasted my time trying for years to make it work.

One day, I really do hope there's a way I can take my email address and leave Google. Number portability deserves an analog in the email world.

<comment><USER7> _One day, I really do hope there 's a way I can take my email address and leave Google. Number portability deserves an analog in the email world._

It has one; register your own domain, then you can move it to any registrar and provider you like.

The analog going the other way would be if you took a Google desk phone number where people had to dial Google's offices into their phone system and then dial your extension, and you wanted to take your (Google office + extension) number elsewhere. That kind of service doesn't exist in the phone number portability world either.

<comment><USER6> The problem? I've got an address under Google's gmail domain that's extremely broadly attached to my identity. Rest assured, I now regret having my identity attached to some corporation, but myself and probably millions of others are sitting in the same boat...

<comment><USER8> Register a domain you like and start the transition now. It doesn't have to be quick.

Gmail has an option to forward all incoming mail to another address, so when you do eventually leave you won't miss any mail.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I remember being absolutely amazed at how clean, fast and huge Gmail was. This post brings back great memories. I got an invite as I was an avid blogger user and signed up as early as 4/20/2004\. Missed out on claiming email@example.com since my first name is only 5 letters long...

<comment><USER10> You're probably lucky to not have firstname.lastname@example.com, it'd be inundated by idiots who don't know their own email address signing you up for things.

<comment><USER11> > You're probably lucky to not have email@example.com, it'd be inundated by > idiots who don't know their own email

Early on, email@example.com and yes absolutely.

Even military fucking emails.

<comment><USER12> > Even military fucking emails.

This will be downvoted, but your comment made me smile for a second, thinking on what kind of strange pr0n about military is flooding your inbox.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I _really_ hope I'm not using Gmail in 15 years. Gmail as a product has gotten progressively worse over the years. Google as a company has gotten progressively worse over the years. They make the worst product decisions of all the large tech companies (seriously, how many chat platforms will they create and kill in those 15 years).

I use Fastmail for somethings but sadly it's not quite as good as Gmail (and not as bad in many ways). Anyone care to wager what an idealized email platform will look like in 15 years?

<comment> 52-6F-62 > _Anyone care to wage what an idealized email platform will look like in 15 > years?_

Now this is a good question. I've wondered (half-assedly) myself recently. I've been on the gmail hook since 2005 (I remember getting approved for the Beta and how in awe I was of having a whole GB of online storage).

I've grown so accustomed to the use of gmail that I have a hard time distinguishing what it is that really holds me there. One item is ubiquity. Everyone knows it now so there's no ambiguity about the address as long as one knows the name I use. That's not a huge detail, but one minor feature I find I don't have to think about.

Outside of that I think the main deterrent to changing is the migration process. It sucks.

I'm hesitant to move from one external provider to another as my faith in the longevity of other services has waned over the years. That said I'm also hesitant to run my own node because of the maintenance and security concerns.

I'm not abreast to any innovations in the space, however. I'd also love to hear from others who might have a lot more experience and knowledge in the area.

<comment><USER14> One of the things I do miss about Gmail is how a lot of restaurant receipt systems and the like have an "@gmail.com" button, but I have to type my full email address out every time, it's definitely a longer process to read over the phone too.

I recommend even if you are not ready to migrate away from Gmail though, to hedge your bets and make the migration process easier _eventually_. Get an email address at your own domain name, and forward it straight to your Gmail. Over time, adjust all your accounts and contacts to send to your new, forwarded address. Then if it any time, you need to move providers, all you have to do is change where your address is forwarded to (and of course, use IMAP to drag all your old emails from Gmail to the new service). I spent about a year and a half using Gmail, but migrating things over to my own email address. Make it a lot easier when the time came.

<comment> 52-6F-62 That's pretty good advice.

I have, in the past, maintained my own email address but found I often gave up after a while—mainly due to saturation of my existing address.

But with a bit of dedication it does sound like your advice would at least be a helpful stop-gap for the future. Thanks.

<comment><USER14> The big thing with this strategy is that all your mail continues to go to the same place. You're just updating accounts when you log into them, and see "oh, that's still using my Gmail address". But it doesn't add a lot of stress or multiple places to check your email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Full automatic replies remind me of the demos of the robot calling on the phone to book an appointment. It's slightly creepy, and I wish there were an indicator that it was written by machine.

Even with plain autocorrect, these days, it's scary how often I read something and later discover it's not at all what the author intended.

I can't think of any software feature, offhand, with "Smart" in the name that I didn't end up hating and wanting to disable. Why do companies keep pushing these?

<comment><AUTHOR> I've found the smart reply feature to be moderately useful.

Some people wire their homes to turn on lights and TVs when they get home. I don't find that creepy because I know that it's just an electro-mechanical process.

Same thing with ML-driven features like smart replies. It's amazing, but it's just math and logic, so I don't find it creepy.

More of this, please.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I remember just how different Gmail felt compared to everything else back then. When is something going to come along and revolutionize email again?

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Finally, official support for scheduled send!

</comment><comment><USER18> I know we're all supposed to love gmail but I find Outlook (including the free web based versions on hotmail.com and outlook.com accounts) to be a far better fit to the way I want to handle messages than gmail.

</comment><comment><USER19> I probably won't see the improvements in G Suite for a (long?) while but that is OK. I use G Suite for Cloud Search that gives me one Search form for all my stuff on Drive, Gmail, docs, etc. Still, I wish they would be faster rolling new stuff out to paying customers.

</comment><comment><USER20> Many people have multiple Gmail addresses (personal, work, etc.), but as far as I know there's no way way too unify them.

In Chrome you need two tabs open and in the mobile app there's no way to default to 'All Inboxes'.

It's a huge pain point.

<comment><USER21> The official Gmail app, DOES have an "All Inboxes" feature now. It's a life saver!

<comment><USER20> The mobile app does, but you can't default to it, so you have to do two taps: "Menu" -> "All Inboxes" every time you open the app if that's the view you prefer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> "First off, we're making Gmail more assistive"

Please, just fucking stop. I know how to write my own emails; everyone does. Every single assistive feature introduced to Gmail has been a regression.

</comment><comment><USER23> I like Gmail's interface in the "Gmail's 15th Birthday"-video much better than the current one!

</comment><comment><USER24> Is Gmail still made with Angular?

<comment><USER4> Was it ever? It predates Angular by at least 5 years (iirc Angular was first conceived in 2009 and used for google's help pages)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Bring back Inbox.</comment>


Ask HN: Best web based Gantt Chart tool? - <AUTHOR> Looking for a dead simple online Gantt tool that allows me to collaborate with others.
Services I've looked at: Tom's Planner Wrike Ext-Scheduler
Anyone have experience with these or any others? <comment><USER2> Look at Trac (trac.edgewall.org) and its plugins (trac-hacks.org).

</comment><comment><USER3> Might be biased as I wrote one of those, but feel free to email me with questions or suggestions for improvements :)

/mats(at)ext-scheduler.com

</comment><comment><USER4> <http://gantto.com></comment>


BMW to Treat Apple CarPlay as a Subscription Service and Charge an Annual Fee - <AUTHOR> https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a15530125/bmw-to-treat-apple-carplay-as-a-subscription-service-and-charge-customers-an-annual-fee/ <comment><USER2> It's a dirty move, but on the other hand most stock infotainment systems are absolute dumpster fires and it's a brilliant move to charge customers for the privilege of bypassing them. I pray no other car manufacturers exploit this.

It's telling that BMW is openly admitting their infotainment is worth less than nothing to their customers.</comment>


Nerdpedit - The Ikea Shelf For Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.brandinfection.com/2010/03/06/nerdpedit-the-ikea-shelf-for-web-nerds/

<comment><USER2> When I look at that a story forms in my mind...

-=-=-=-

[Doug's Bedroom]

Doug, Ikea Product Development: "Ugh... What time is it? Oh, God 4:45am? I have to get ready for work in an hour. Why did I drink so much last night? It's Steve's fault. "What's one more round of shots gonna hurt" he says. OW! OW! OW! I definitely need some aspir--OH SHIT! I'm supposed to present new product ideas at 9am. Come on Doug! Think quick!"

...

[Product Development Meeting, 9:45am]

Generic Middle-Management Boss-Guy: "Hmm... an internets-inspired shelving unit. Sounds good. Let's get our tech guys on it."

Doug [Inner-monologue]: "Heh, heh, heh. You've done it again, Dougy-boy. Sly like a fox--NO! Sly like a Doug!"

-=-=-=-

(I know it's a joke product, but sometimes you can't contain your imagination. And sometimes you just aren't getting enough sleep.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hehe, great comment :)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: International SaaS startups which payment system do you use? - <AUTHOR> We've been using PayPal so far. But recently Stripe started offering USD settlement.
Did anyone test conversion rate (CR) of PayPal vs Stripe.
I assume PayPal to offer higher CR and less fraud.
But at the same time, PayPal has reputation for banning people randomly. Secondly, sometimes PayPal is a problem for few customers who have unverified PayPal account trying to use subscribe. <comment><USER2> Just add stripe, they are miles ahead of the competition and it is just so damn easy to set them up.

Paypal is gonna cut your conversion rate by a huge percent. I had a startup which initially had just paypal and after adding stripe my number of signups doubled. There are a lot of people who _hate_ paypal or don't have an account with Paypal.

<comment><USER3> PayPal does have options now (actually, they've had them I think for a decade at this point) to support straight up credit and debit card processing for customers who don't have PayPal accounts.</comment></comment>


How to balance a chain of inverted pendulums - <AUTHOR> http://fermatslibrary.com/s/a-pendulum-theorem <comment><USER2> Done by a friend of mine! It's fascinating to watch this demonstration, although I'm not sure they still do it - it's years since I've seen it.

I might see if I can find some video to share.

Edit: OK, here's another of my friends, Steve Mould, demonstrating it: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnn21smGVrQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnn21smGVrQ)</comment>


How to Get Rich Playing Video Games Online - <AUTHOR> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/20/how-to-get-rich-playing-video-games-online <comment><USER2> This is very much like sports - very few make it to the top, and it's kind of subsidised by the ones coming up or just idly watching. Unlike actual sport, the disciplines here change rapidly, in spite of Blizzard's best efforts, World of Warcraft numbers are rapidly dwindling so a WoW start will pretty much have to start from scratch in another game or quit streaming as a career move. Game developers or even petty missteps can have disastrous consequences for streamers. Game developers can, for example ban streaming altogether, or request takedown with their content selectively. This is a 'career' but with no major prospects and if one was to put equivalnet amount of time in another field, say learning how deep learning works, the rewards will be far greater on average. I also think that 'pro' streamers no longer enjoy the games they play for "18 hours a day" and can't afford casual games with the camera turned off. It's a huge 'big brother' in their lives.

<comment><USER3> That's why you build a personal brand while you're riding the coattails of a popular game. See Day9, who plays whatever game he feels like playing on his scheduled "day off" and streams it. He definitely has fun, even if it doesn't make him money (he recently streamed Mario, for example, which Nintendo [probably] claimed the revenue for) he's still building his personal brand and personal audience. His fans will follow him no matter what game he starts playing, because they're following _him_. But you're right that it's a hit- based system and if you don't become a hit (which requires a lot of effort and a lot of luck) then you're going to starve trying to "play video games for a living."

<comment><USER4> Yup. It's a new "field" if you will, and a lot of people are getting hurt during the birth phase. That said I've noticed streamers focusing more on being game agnostic, they'll demo new games and take note how much of their fan base follows. If the new game is a success they'll keep at it, if not they'll migrate back.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No mention of Dr. Disrespect - a Twitch persona who recently won "Streamer of the Year" at the Esports Industry Awards.

Just a passing mention of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, a game which according to some is growing faster than Minecraft did. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) is the most popular streamed game on Twitch right now. The game regularly has over 2,000,000 concurrent players, has sold over 13,000,000 copies, and is still in beta with just one multiplayer map. It has been the most popular game on Steam for a few months. Some digital items obtained from loot crates have sold for over $1,000.

There is a whole ecosystem that has developed underneath the Twitch platform where secondary services help gamers overlay responsive graphics over the video stream as well as take donations. Top PUBG streamers can make well over $1,000 per night in donations on top of their cut of the Twitch subscription fee.

<comment><USER6> I don't mean to be rude, but so what?

There's no need to specifically mention your favorite streamer, or your favorite game. Just because PUBG is popular right now doesn't mean this is a phenomenon centered around PUBG. There have been many streamers making A LOT of money for years now. League of Legends, Counterstrike, and DotA 2, for example, have always had large fan bases with "Top streamers" making similarly ridiculous amount of money in tips.

<comment><USER5> There is basically no mention of the hit game on HN. It is presently a video game phenomenon and is inspiring video game developers to explore that video game genre.

That particular streamer is changing the streaming game and is invested in some third party streamer support apps. He has broad appeal as little kids dressed up as this Twitch streamer for Halloween this year.

I think an article about the game, its streamers, the revenue sharing, and how Twitch is evolving would make the front page of HN.

That is all. No hidden agenda.

<comment><USER7> PUBG inspired nothing, those kind of battle royale games have been around for ages (ages in game terms, a year or two ago H1Z1 accidentally popularized battle royale as an alternate mode in its zombie survival game, which was in beta).

AFAIK PUBG was made in response to other games that used to be popular in the genre failing after major changes, specifically H1Z1.

EDIT: Fair-cop to them though, they've obviously done a greaat job. It's just that games like this are _already_ coming out constantly, it's the new genre to clone. Before battle royale was that hot genre, it was MOBAs[1] + survival games a few years ago and MMOs were a few years before that. Battle Royale is actually a sort of spin off out of the survival genre. Another interesting thing to note is that survival/battle royale games have a lot of indie entrants who tend to have long alpha phases where hype makes them incredibly popular (DayZ, 7 days to die, Rust, Ark: Survial Evolved, Unturned, Don't Starve). Then the player base can sometimes die off as the game suffers from poor performance and slow development.

At the moment PUBG is suffering from lots of hackers, so we'll see whether it actually stays popular.

[1] Multiplayer online battle arena (5v5, top down, team game), spawned from a mod made for warcraft 3, popular examples include league of legends, DOTA2, Heroes of the Storm, etc.

<comment><USER8> While you're technically correct in saying that PUBG isn't the first game of its kind, PlayerUnknown (creative lead) is the creator of the Arma mod DayZ, which to my knowledge is the origin of this genre.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> The bit I'd be interested to read about is the psychology behind the "donors." Why would anyone throw down random $100 or $500 without a quid quo pro to someone receiving many other such donations?

I understand streaming, generally, and have paid to subscribe to a channel before but the random throwing around of not insignificant amounts of money gets me scratching my head.

 _(Should make it clear I 'm not criticizing the practice. I just find it interesting, considering how understand the psychology behind it could help creators in other spheres, or open source developers, etc.)_

<comment><USER10> People do a lot of things that baffle me.

Spending $100-500 for some entertainment is actually reasonable and not at all baffling.

<comment><USER9> Sure, I've spent money on a lot of weird things, giving arbitrary money to people I think who needed it, buying coins in games I've enjoyed, etc.. but donations with no quid pro quo to top Twitch players till do baffle me, given people making the donations know they're well off. It feels like me sending random checks to Larry David because I like watching his show :-D I'd just be keen to see an article digging into that.

<comment><USER10> What in Earth do you mean a "quid pro quo?" Twitch user gives entertainment and in return the donor kicks in some cash of they want to. Just like a busker.

If you feel they provide you with $500 in entertainment and you have a spare $500, then it makes sense.

That's like asking "why would you go to a casino when you know casinos make lots of money?"

If you're watching Larry David's shows the business transaction has already taken place. Larry David doesn't stream his shows for free and give you the opportunity to give him donations in exchange and then thank donors during the episode.

<comment><USER9> _Twitch user gives entertainment and in return the donor kicks in some cash of they want to. Just like a busker._

I understand the busker metaphor, but the $100/$500 donations we hear about most often are to _successful_ streamers, so it's more like throwing $500 at Axel Rose. That's the bit I find interesting.

Such donations strike me as unusually altruistic for the demographic involved, in a way that we don't see en masse in other public online venues (such as on YouTube, donating to open source, Instagram, bloggers, etc.) I'm quite interested in learning more about the psychology around that because I think other arenas deserve it too.

<comment><USER10> Same reason why Axel Rose being rich and successful doesn't stop fans from buying albums, going to shows, and buying merch.

<comment><USER11> Presumably those fans are buying those things at least in part because they _want to have the album, concert experience, or merch_. With twitch donations/tips you get comparatively very little in return - your username might pop up in a video overlay for a few seconds, and the streamer might be like "hey thanks, [username]!". Those 3-4 seconds are typically the entirety of your several-hundered-dollar experience.

<comment><USER12> Those effects can't really be considered to be "your several-hundred-dollar experience", because you get them all, even the on-screen "thanks", for a much lesser tip. What people are getting out of the large tips is something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What I think is crazy is that this industry exists at the scale it does. It has replaced reality TV for a segment of the world population. There are legions of people that watch these streams, just to watch someone doing something that they could do themselves (but maybe not win as much). This isn't like F1 racing where I'll never be able to afford a racecar, or football where I don't want to exercise. Most of the kids watching these streams own a decent computer and can play.

I suppose it's just not for me. I watch video game reviews to see if something is worth buying, but not more than a few minutes of gameplay. Plus the other things that streaming groups/houses do aren't appealing to me.

Have I gotten old? Is this why grey haired CEOs often miss great business opportunities? They just don't "get it?"

<comment><USER14> > Most of the kids watching these streams own a decent computer and can play.

Youre making it sound not only as if only kids watch this, but also like playing any sport at all is so much different - and then compare it to Reality TV instead of live sports. Actual WTF? Some of the streamers (variety streamers) do play for just entertainment value, but most stick to just one game. A lot of it is also being able to live chat with other people watching and interact with the person streaming.

> This isn't like F1 racing where I'll never be able to afford a racecar, or > football where I don't want to exercise.

Why isn't it like that? That's exactly what it is. Do you have any idea how long professional esports players competing in tournaments have to work, to stay at the top level? And do you think they can play at the same level on the average person's hardware? Have a look at Starcraft 2, Counter Strike Source, or Osu!. These are games where top players make 100+ strategic actions per minute, need to have lightning reaction speeds and accuracy, and make bursts of 10 actions per second for full minutes, respectively.

How can it be such a shock to non-gamers that people watch other people play a game, rather than play it themselves? Just imagine it - people watching a game! /s It's exactly the same as every professional sport that has ever existed.

<comment><USER15> _Youre making it sound not only as if only kids watch this, but also like playing any sport at all is so much different - and then compare it to Reality TV instead of live sports._

Now I've got my next business idea.

Attach wireless streaming cameras to all the players in a sportsball game. Each player has a HUD, and can see chat messages in real time.

Heck, for something like American Football, you could even have them vote on what play the opposing team is likely to do next. The player can take that under advisement, and maybe compliment a viewer when correct. To make more money, they viewers could bid on the predictions, which might help increase their accuracy. The player and the sport get a percentage of the bids, and the rest forms a prize pool for the most accurate bidders.

<comment><USER16> This is probably as close as you're going to get at this moment in time to what you're saying. This was posted here a few months ago, haven't checked back in to see how it's going for them a season later.

[http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/the_...](http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2017/02/the_salt_lake_screaming_eagles_a_football_team_controlled_by_fans_with_smartphones.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Garcia's specialty is the multiplayer fantasy game World of Warcraft. While > he isn't its best player, he has a _knack for talking entertainingly over > his play_ : he is funny, brash, and filled with stories about his delinquent > childhood in Newark.

Most, if not all, of the live gameplay videos nowadays mostly tend to be about screaming and raging at the screen with lesser amount of stories. And for some reason people like that a lot.

This along with the slew of _Reaction_ videos where people watch other people watching and _reacting_ to stuff makes me wonder - why are people really interested in someone doing some stuff? Are they so alone that they need some validation or is it more to do with increasing voyeurism nowadays?

<comment><USER18> The only streamer that I really watch is Brian Kibler, who plays Hearthstone and used to be a pro MTG player. I think the reason I watch him and no one else really is because he's older, doesn't rage, includes his wife in his stream occasionally, and provides insights into his decision making process. He's just good natured and it's the closest thing I've found to those poker tournaments that I used to watch on cable at midnight.

<comment><USER19> Likewise, I watch almost exclusively Firebat (with a bit of Kibler every once and awhile).

He does a really good job of balancing being funny and interesting (as a person), and giving really good insights into his thought process in playing Hearthstone, building decks, and competing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The 18-hour days and other working conditions they of the top earners described in the article tell me that a lot of people will age out of their ability to sustain their level of income. It will be an quick transition like sports or porn where you hit a certain age and the dollar value of the level at which you can perform falls off a cliff because you're limited by your body.

I would hope that the pro streamers are planning to use the industry connections they develop for a move into some other part of the video gaming industry around that time.

</comment><comment><USER21> I played Counter-Strike competitively (and to the extent it was possible "professionally") about 10 years ago and made some money winning tournaments, but nothing compared to what people are making nowadays. We got our hotel paid for for a few tournaments and that was "making it" back then :) It's fantastic to see the sector grow and I'd love to return to esports/gaming sometime in the future.

Unfortunately, it's not all rainbows and roses, as I think there are some detrimental forces at play which are trying to rip out the grassroots origins of esports and commercialize it to the n-th degree (see Blizzard's Overwatch League). This was attempted before in '07 (see the Championship Gaming Series) and it failed miserably, so we'll see how it does this time around.

<comment><USER4> OWL is a great example because there was a $20m buy in for I believe 8 teams. That's $160m in funding, with significant participation by organizations like the Kraft group. Whether it'll go anywhere is like asking if a specific well funded start-up will go anywhere, but its definitely being pushed hard.

<comment><USER21> I personally don't think Blizzard has any idea what they're doing in the esports scene. They destroyed SC2 and fumbled HotS, I don't think Overwatch will be any different. I was at Blizzcon last weekend and even though everyone there seemed excited about Overwatch, the numbers just weren't there. Barely breaking 300k viewers for a _world championship_ (when DOTA, LoL, CSGO all break 1M+) -- the state of the game is not looking great at the moment.

Not sure who invested like $20M per team but that seems like quite the gamble.

<comment><USER22> OWL definitely has a weird, heavy-handed feel to it -- it's almost as though Blizzard is trying to forcibly create a competitive 'scene' that emulates a traditional sports league, rather than allowing the scene to evolve naturally as it has in other games.

By far the weirdest part of OWL for me has been Blizzard's insistence on having teams represent cities -- up to the point of _renaming existing teams_ to fit their naming scheme. (For instance, the "Dallas Fuel" team was created out of the existing EnVyUs lineup.) This is incredibly unusual for esports; the typical arrangement is for teams to either choose their own names, or to play under the name of an existing cross-game esports organization (such as Team Liquid, Evil Geniuses, or Fnatic).

<comment><USER21> > OWL definitely has a weird, heavy-handed feel to it -- it's almost as though > Blizzard is trying to forcibly create a competitive 'scene' that emulates a > traditional sports league, rather than allowing the scene to evolve > naturally as it has in other games.

Bingo. Which is why so many competitive gamers are simply not interested in it. The way esports has generally grown is "bottom-up" \-- local competitions spring up first and then larger, more well-funded tournaments take place. Blizzard is going for the "top-down" approach. We'll see what happens.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I think it's just good timing now because we have the tech to do it. The demand was always there.

Back in 1999 and the early 2000s you could make over $100,000 if you won a single Quake 3 tournament.

Live streaming (with professional commentators) was available back then, but there were no platforms for it so it never caught onto the masses. You had to really be in the know to watch them.

But I do remember people being rabid fans and highly engaged back then. Just as much as now, just at a smaller scale.

I made a little bit of money playing competitive Quake 3 and helped develop and run the most popular gaming ladder for a certain mod of that game. Good times.

<comment><USER24> > The demand was always there.

I remember when my brother bought an NES, I wasn't good enough to really play any of the games, but I used to love watching him play because he got so much farther into the games for me and it was a way to spend time with him. I guess that impulse hasn't really gone away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Interesting read and insight into a subculture I know very little about.

Looks like only a few of them are getting rich, and it isn't without its costs. Working seven days a week as a professional gamer is pretty brutal.

<comment> FLUX-YOU >Working seven days a week as a professional gamer is pretty brutal.

I'm gonna throw some shade towards gameplay streamers. Streamers who do focused content and actually produce shows as you would in a TV/Radio studio have a real job which I've actually done, so this doesn't include them.

Playing a game and running a stream, technically, is not hard. Engaging with viewers is not hard. There's a bunch of solutions out of the box that allow you to manage subscription announcements, overlays, and other stuff, so that isn't too hard either. Spending time in a chair isn't hard. 4-5 hours of working out per week and healthy diet choices would help that, but isn't a panacea because research shows sitting for long periods is bad anyway. I wouldn't be surprised if there was some kind of viewer management software akin to CRM software that make it easier to relate to a larger amount of people. After all, people have limits on the amount of social connections they are able to manage themselves. So remembering your viewers may not even be hard.

The hard part comes with people being unprepared to essentially become public figures (very much in the Hollywood or political sense) and being unable to deal with harassment, death threats, and insults and the worst part of internet. If you don't have enough viewers to shrug off a controversy, your channel will get small, you'll lose revenue, and likely start stressing out about that as well. Having a fallback career plan is essential.

But if you are mentally tough and don't repeat the mistakes of other streamers and public figures (which is likely conveniently available for you to watch), being a streamer is not difficult. Not like other careers. Making money is a different story -- you can do everything right and still not be popular because the mob is fickle. That's just career luck, which isn't specific to streaming. You shouldn't be a public figure if you aren't prepared mentally for it. Twitch can only ban so many people.

However, I very much support tapping this revenue stream. I truly don't care if a loser drops $500 on a streamer who's showing cleavage as long as she's of legal age -- more power to that streamer. And it's up to parents to police their kids watching cleavage streamers. That's not really Twitch's job.

Just call it for what it is: easily hacking viewership for revenue. The exception being taking care of yourself mentally first.

<comment><USER26> Of course "streaming isn't hard" in the same way that playing football isn't hard. It's when you do it at a professional level and have to put in mad hours every week to keep up that it becomes brutal. All without guarantee that you'll even get paid if you're just unlucky that week and don't get enough viewers.

<comment><USER27> Streaming requires little commitment to try out. You can easily have a normal job and stream at night to ease into it. The skills required are to just be entertaining. You can quit immediately if you want or need to, without dropping a beat. The commitment required is orders of magnitude less than something like playing sports professionally.

The actual comparison to football is "esports," where people play games competitively. There, you actually do have to put in large amounts of hours to compete at the highest level, without being guaranteed prize money or competitive wins.

<comment><USER28> If you don't want any viewers. You vastly underestimate how hard it is to build a stream that attracts a healthy audience.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hmmm... I read this, got distracted, followed links, and bought a game in a Steam sale (Avadon 2 - £2.99).

I think I'm doing it wrong.

</comment><comment><USER30> Slightly off-topic but now even New Yorker is inserting autoplay videos about completely unrelated topics in the middle of long articles (in my case "Anthony Bourdain on Going from Obama to Trump"). Why would they do such a thing? Are they hoping everyone suddenly develops ADHD?

<comment><USER31> I now browse with 4 extensions to handle issues like this. The autoplaying is everywhere and absurd. (NYTimes even has autoplaying animations you can't turn off. I sent them an email asking to have the option to turn it off as a paying subscriber and they didn't even respond.)

It's a mix of reasons, but it's usually ultimately about turning you into a product. I think it's disgusting.

To make the internet bearable, I use the following extensions: Ad Block Plus HTTPS Everywhere Privacy Badger And, the newest in the bunch, Ghostery.

I do have to twiddle some things on and off now and then, but on the whole it works and my online experience is a lot less jarring.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Primarily you are entertaining, secondarily you are good at video games. There is a narrative pattern that you must be a master of to get any kind of interest on Twitch. It is a unique artform in and of itself.

</comment><comment><USER33> From reading the article it sounds like it could be retitled to almost "How to get rich playing video games or die trying" but another aspect is the global scale of this thing, you can also look to see China's obsession with video- streaming to see that this isn't really a one-time trend but rather an enduring thing that will likely keep evolving into more physical interactions where streamers do more and more celebrity on-site activities rather than purely virtual.

</comment><comment><USER34> My favorite streamer for Overwatch, aimbotCalvin has 300,000 subscribers. This puts into perspective how much he makes. Wow.

<comment><USER35> He has 340000 _followers_, not subscribers. Subscriber counts aren't public but if his follower/subscriber ratio is similar to some of the top streamers he'd probably have around 5-6000 subscribers.

<comment><USER34> Aw thanks for pointing that out, my mistake

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Tell that to the tens of thousands of streamers on Twitch who have 10 or less viewers, who absolutely are not getting rich.

Like others have mentioned it's a combination of luck to get the initial attention, and skill to maintain that following (either actual video game skill, entertainment skill, or a combination of both).

</comment><comment><USER37> Pretty click baity, "How entertainers make money by playing video games" is still click bait, but at least gives you an idea of what this is about.

I feel like there is a lot to discuss about this topic (donations, reliable income, future plans ect...) from twitch streaming that doesn't get touched on. But it boils down to the audience wants to interact with you, and will pay you to interact with them.

I'm curious how reliable this income really is, asking for money to give to a celebrity playing a game vs asking for money to play a game seems like a weird event

</comment><comment><USER38> Soon there will be Video Game U, where you can get a college diploma by playing video games all day.

</comment><comment><USER39> oooOOH!! I like rich playing video games! Where do I get them online?!..

</comment><comment><USER40> The same applies to pretty much any skill: to be successful, work hard and be very good at what you do. That's the entire article in a nutshell.

<comment><USER41> And be attractive. The top youtube/twitch people either look or sound like celebs. They are either cute or have the voice, the pipes, of a radio star.

<comment><USER42> Lots of people are saying that, but it's clearly not true. I don't think imaqtpie [0] fits that description. Skimming through the top twitch streams right now, plenty of them don't fit that description.

[0] [https://go.twitch.tv/videos/200675143](https://go.twitch.tv/videos/200675143)

<comment><USER43> I haven't looked in awhile, but when I used to watch dota streams the top four or five (by viewer count) were always extremely attractive Eastern European and Russian women. They were better than average players, but not good enough to command that kind of attention.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple's plunge has cost Warren Buffett nearly $4B today - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/03/investing/warren-buffett-berkshire-hathaway-apple-stock/index.html <comment><USER2> He'll be down to his last $80B or so at this rate.</comment>


Fare: Metaprogramming from the ground up: avoid C - <AUTHOR> http://fare.livejournal.com/135078.html <comment><USER2> _But that doesn't mean it is impossible to write trivial harmful metaprograms in CPP, as is easily demonstrated in my counter-example die_die_stupid_c_compiler.c_

I'm slightly disappointed that

      gcc -E die_die_stupid_c_compiler.c

didn't die, although it did produce about 750k of output, which is quite impressive...

<comment><USER3> Can anyone explain why this takes so long to compile? It doesn't look that complicated.

Edit: I compiled with "gcc -O3 -s", which took 8 minutes, but the executable is only 4784 bytes.

<comment><USER4> The long compilation time is due to the optimization options. Without optimization it compiles in a few seconds.

Yet, the macros leave plenty of space for optimization. See the size of your executable compared to the unoptimized one of qwph above.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Like Perl, C++ is a swiss army chainsaw of a programming language. Unlike Perl, it's got all the blades simultaneously and permanently cast in a fixed half-open position. Don't turn it on."

Priceless.

</comment><comment><USER5> Uhm, I find this post kind of uninspired. Did it really require experimental verification to show that meta-programming in C probably wasn't a good idea?

I find this sort of argument in general a bit straw-man-ish. They use a programming language for something it's not suited for and then reflect that back on the programming language.</comment>


Open access to ACM Digital Library during coronavirus pandemic - <AUTHOR> https://www.acm.org/articles/bulletins/2020/march/dl-access-during-covid-19 <comment><USER2> The income from the ACM/IEEE's investment portfolio is large enough that it could fund _all_ of arXiv.org's annual expenses ~20 times over, in perpetuity, without dipping into capital. See this thread for details: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22103763](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22103763)

</comment><comment><USER3> Btw, ACM has started adding some drm banner (rightslink) to the papers. This seems like a recent addition. Why do these bodies (ACM/IEEE) exist ? I get the journal prestige angle and the loop that is hard to break, but for CS, most of it is conference driven. Any sub-field has about 50 people who call the shots. Why don't these 50 people decide not to be associated with ACM/IEEE ? What's in it for them ? Is it just apathy ? For example, the PC of a top conference (say ISCA) could just fork it for next year onwards (say to SCA) and remove the affiliation with ACM/IEEE. Since the sub-fields are quite small, there isn't a huge risk of loss of prestige or dilution. You follow where the PC goes. In general, the community decides that there are 3-4 top conferences in the area. Once you migrate those 3-4, you have taken back control. csrankings.org does a reasonable job of capturing the top conferences in every area. If you are on the PC of any of these conferences, I would like to know why this hasn't happened yet. Fortunately, some of the top ones (usenix ones, vldb, nips, etc.) are open access, and we should have all of them migrate.

</comment><comment><USER4> If you would like please consider becoming a professional member $99/year of ACM then you also get access to Safaribooksonline. Personally I think its good value for money.

[https://www.acm.org/membership/membership- options](https://www.acm.org/membership/membership-options)

<comment><USER5> IIRC (admittedly it's been a few years), ACM Membership only got you access to a _selection_ of material from Safari, not the whole thing.

That might have changed given that Safari has reorganized and changed like 5x in the past few years.

Anyone confirm?

<comment><USER6> Last year, I explicitly checked with Safari customer service about this, told them this is too good to be true since a regular Safari membership costs 3x of the ACM membership. The customer service replied and confirmed there is nothing different. So go for it :) The basic ACM membership is really a good deal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There was never a reason this wasn't open access, except to hoard information. Someone archive this and make it free forever.

<comment><USER8> I'm really curious how such an organization can ever maintain their copyright in the future as the defense could always say the defendant obtained the pdf from the free trial.

<comment><USER9> The pdfs can be timestamped.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> if you make this permanent I'd be happy to start paying my dues again

<comment><USER11> Same here.

<comment><USER12> Same here as well!

<comment><USER13> I know this place discourages this sort of thing, but really want to make this emphasized in case anyone from the ACM is reading:

same here x3!

<comment><USER14> As someone with a corporate account and a scihub user, I want to declare the same (this isn't new). Open access to civilization's research is the is how a mature civilization should behave. I would gladly start paying ACM dues again if they kept this access open.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Part of me can't help but suspect that they are also doing this because, believe it or not, many computer science researchers don't know that these paywalls exist, because they are subscribed through their university. Now that they are stuck at home, these researchers could start noticing how inconvenient and ridiculous these paywalls are, given that they are the ones who write and typeset the papers and review the research for free.

So it may be a smart move for ACM to avoid making researchers aware of paywalls, and continuing to drag this outdated publication model for a few more years... (If I'm not mistaken, most subscription money comes from universities, which subscribe annually, and there's very little revenue from individual downloads, so most likely this measure isn't actually costing ACM much in terms of revenue.)

<comment><USER16> It's true (at least in my experience) that the paywall is transparently dealt with when connecting from a university network, but most sites make it pretty easy to access their content via your institutional login even if you're not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> At first glance this appears to include everything _including conference proceedings,_ which makes it better than the access I had when I was in graduate school and better than I have currently as a standard ACM member. I hope I'm correct about that.

<comment><USER18> > better than the access I had when I was in graduate school

How did you function as a graduate student without access to conference proceedings?

> better than I have currently as a standard ACM member

I think that's only if you de-select the option for the library, which people often do if they have institutional access (which will be almost all academic and industrial researchers I guess.)

<comment><USER17> > How did you function as a graduate student without access to conference > proceedings?

I don't remember too many instances where a paper I wanted could not be found (read into that whatever you like), but I do remember hitting some annoying limits in my institution's access.

> I think that's only if you de-select the option for the library, which > people often do if they have institutional access (which will be almost all > academic and industrial researchers I guess.)

I only recently signed up., but I think it's possible we're not talking about the same thing. If my base level membership has access to all conference proceedings without additional charge - which seems to be what your comment is implying - it's a pleasant surprise.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Check out the HOPL conferences, they're really fascinating. I'll post a link if I can find an index of them.

<comment><USER20> Unfortunately, HOPL 4 has been postponed because of the virus, but that will be a hoot, with Rich Hickey, Don Syme, Dan Ingalls, Robert Harper, Brendan Eich, Walter Bright, Bjarne Stroustrup....

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Alright, someone tell me what are some must downloads? I've been out of college for a while so haven't kept up.

edit: I am most interested in models of computing, and more recently ML-family of languages, and the theories behind it. I am also generally interested in those papers that people view as "classics" or serve as computing history. Hoares CSP, or most anything by Dijkstra that may not be public already.

<comment><USER21> What are you interested in? The recommendations I can make for someone fascinated with LISP are different than the ones I can make for someone interested in computing history are different than the ones I can make for someone interested in processor design and so on. There's a very wide selection here.

<comment><USER22> Given your submissions to HN I'd say just go with whatever _you 're_ interested in, it's bound to be good. ;-)

As for myself, anything in re: compiling functional and/or stack-based languages; and DSLs for GUIs.

Cheers!

<comment><USER21> _APL compilation and interpretation by translating to F83VEC_ ; Naugle

[https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/22415.22032](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/22415.22032)

Here's a double-hitter: compiling a functional language (APL) to a stack-based language (FORTH).

<comment><USER22> _awesome_

\- - - -

I found a couple of interesting tidbits:

Computer programming as an art, Donald E. Knuth [https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/361604.361612](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/361604.361612)

Prolog - the language and its implementation compared with Lisp, David H D Warren, Luis M Pereira, Fernando C. N. Pereira [https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/872734.806939](https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/872734.806939)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Can we shame the IEEE and their Computer Society into doing the same?

<comment><USER23> [https://twitter.com/ComputerSociety/status/12451145516722135...](https://twitter.com/ComputerSociety/status/1245114551672213506?s=19)

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Do you have any tip for android app that can provide some enhanced experience reading the pdf articles (like from ACM?) on Android mobile phone?

I don't mean generic PDF reader for Android. I'm looking for something that provides similar user experience like Firefox's "reader view". Is there something like that?

</comment><comment><USER25> It should be Open Access all the time. Keep the change!

</comment><comment><USER26> This is great news, and a kind gesture of the ACM. I used to be a member, fell off years ago, but this might inspire me to re-join. I'd been thinking membership was >= $199, maybe it used to be? but now @ $99 it seems worthwhile.

Total unrelated aside: it's funny that the name of the person making this announcement has a name which is essentially two foods ("Cherri Pancake"). Then again, I had a classmate in primary school whose name was Candy Kane (well, Candice, but yes she went by "Candy" in 4th grade).

</comment><comment><USER27> I wrote a paper for an ACM conference back in the early 80's. It has existed behind a paywall ever since. I fail to see how this is aligned with the concept of sharing science...when an organization takes ownership of papers just because they happen to put on a conference. In my opinion, the same applies to IEEE and other organizations. And this, again, my opinion, is particularly true of taxpayer-funded university research that ends-up behind paywalls.

<comment><USER20> You can usually get away with putting out a preprint in public (basically the paper slightly modified), and anything really good is often duplicated elsewhere. There are some gems behind the digital library paywall, but google scholar is really good at sniffing out free links. At any rate, I totally agree that the Digital Library should be a force for good and only openness can accomplish that goal. Most new papers are openly available (authors have to pay more, however), but that isn't good enough.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> "Your IP Address has been blocked - Please contact firstname.lastname@example.com" :(

After just 100 DLs. Does anyone know whether I really have to write a mail or will the block get lifted after x hours?

<comment><USER29> They gave you access to read... not to download and read later. So no shock you got blocked.

IMHO as a life-long ACM member... library access should be permanently free. But that's clearly not what they have chosen to do.

<comment><USER30> Hell, I used to get blocked just for opening 8 papers in new tabs. Getting blocked after a 100 paper bender is pretty good luck!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> This is awesome! Great decision by the folks at ACM! well done guys!!

</comment><comment><USER32> Is ACM membership useful for just typical developers not in research or grad school?

<comment><USER33> I joined the ACM in college. I found the library pretty useful as a "typical developer" and took good advantage of the free access that my employers provided. I paid for ACM library access out of my own pocket when I left for a smaller company, but let it lapse a couple years ago when I realized that most of the papers I was reading were also available elsewhere, and that the journals I was following no longer had as many compelling papers.

(Reading papers on a regular basis is something that I encourage developers and managers to do; it's a good way to expand your toolkit and get ideas for different ways to solve things. A paper a week -- maybe an hour a week, on average -- and that's like fifty new things you've been exposed to in a year. These add up, and eventually can make a big difference in how you approach problems).

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> I'm really hoping they'll open IEEE journals as well.

</comment><comment><USER35> Now their fancy js pages don't load

</comment><comment><USER36> "... if that really is your name."</comment>


Doxing the hero who stopped WannaCry was irresponsible and dumb - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/05/15/doxing-hero-stopped-wannacry-irresponsible-dumb/ <comment><USER2> Yeah, let's tell everyone everything about someone who partially foiled an organized crime operation.

What could possibly go wrong?

</comment><comment><USER3> _It's obvious that he just wants to be left alone to get on with what he enjoys – hacking shit, and figuring out how stuff works_

No, he wants to be left alone because it endangers his life to reveal his identity. Jesus, do people seriously expect someone that's done heroic deeds like this to jump out and scream "I am Batman"???

<comment><USER4> The author talks about this further down in the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> If some journalists were able to find his identity, he can safely assume that the people behind wannacry are also able to do it. Maybe he'll take some measures to protect himslef more now.

I would've liked to see the journalists find the hackers behind this. That would've been an achievement indeed.

<comment><USER6> _If some journalists were able to find his identity, he can safely assume that the people behind wannacry are also able to do it._

How do you figure? Digging through information and finding out this sort of stuff is literally what journalists do for a living.

<comment><USER7> I occasionally offer to dox people to show them how bad their OpSec truly is or as an example of why I don't use social media like Facebook for privacy concerns. Doxing people is often trivial since nearly anyone contributing to discussions online have large online profiles. It isn't a very difficult task - just a game of connecting the dots and knowing how to construct specific Google search queries (eg: "site:___ + 'some info'").

If a journalist can find it - any internet layman who knows how to Google can find it.

<comment><USER8> I've been wondering if it is possible to dox my Reddit account. I like to think I've been careful not to give too much away but I wonder if it is true.

I would like to find a white hat site that prepares a report on what they can find about you.

(For the record, my reddit account has a different username than my HackerNews account)

<comment><USER7> _> I would like to find a white hat site that prepares a report on what they can find about you._

This would be difficult to start as it would require trust. I already do exactly this ("white hat doxing") but do you _trust_ that that is actually what I'm doing? Maybe it would be easier as an established corporation with an explicit privacy policy.

 _> I've been wondering if it is possible to dox my Reddit account._

You can make it _much_ more time consuming and more difficult (read: but not impossible) to do so by using this userscript as frequently as possible: [https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/10380-reddit- overwrite](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/10380-reddit-overwrite)

I personally run it for all posts older than 2~3 weeks (when activity/relevance of the post is nearly equivalent to "0").

Some sites still archive posts w/o updating for any future edits, there is web cache, etc. But those are far harder to search and tie together than simply browsing your comments on your profile. Note that some subreddits may ban you for using it and you'll get a bunch of AutoModerator posts asking you not to do that because of thread integrity and blah blah blah.

<comment><USER9> I _hate_ it when people use these scripts and do have a rule against deleting posts that have replies in one subreddit I moderate. There are two kinds of things harmed by this behavior:

* In communities where people buy and sell things, or offer pay for services (e.g. /r/forhire), a glance at someone's account history provides some insight into their likely reliability. It's not much to go on, but that's inherent to doing business with strangers online.

* In many communities, previous discussions are full of useful information for future readers. Removing half of a conversation often ruins that utility.

<comment><USER7> _> In communities where people buy and sell things, or offer pay for services (e.g. /r/forhire), a glance at someone's account history provides some insight into their likely reliability. It's not much to go on, but that's inherent to doing business with strangers online._

Trivially solvable with an alias used exclusively for such dealings where you don't scrub history. Also, as mentioned, it isn't necessarily that good of a rule anyway. Better than nothing but not necessarily by much.

 _> In many communities, previous discussions are full of useful information for future readers. Removing half of a conversation often ruins that utility._

I value my personal privacy (and time) more than any use my conversations will have for future readers. I don't have the time to selectively edit/delete hundreds of posts. One argument against this would be to "post less" but then many of those "useful posts" may not have ever been made to begin with so there isn't a net difference.

Also - quoting the most relevant bits of a post in your own post helps retain at least some context. Even if you were to edit/remove your post now - I have two pieces of it quoted that a future reader would at least have some context as to our conversation.

<comment><USER9> I'll grant this for that technique: while your website linked to your username here made it easy to guess your reddit username, 5 minutes of looking did not recover your deleted comments.

It's a little difficult for me to wrap my head around the mindset though: if you're concerned about privacy, why would you post anything sensitive to reddit? If you haven't posted anything sensitive, why delete it? I'll admit, I've never been the victim or perpetrator of doxxing, so I may be missing something.

<comment><USER7> _> I'll admit, I've never been the victim or perpetrator of doxxing, so I may be missing something._

Most people leak information constantly and each bit or byte of information by itself is not important. However, in aggregate, people leak enough information about themselves to have it _become_ sensitive information. What can be seen as harmless on its own can lead to more sensitive/"harmful" information being gathered.

For an example, let's say you share a photograph of yourself somewhere in London. Maybe you went on vacation, a business trip, a family visit, a honeymoon, etc. There are plenty of reasons to be in London _one time_! Now over the period of 10 years you've shared a few dozen photos of yourself in various places of London. What are the chances you live in London? Would you say the chances are higher than if you had only shared a single photograph?

Likewise, information that doesn't seem sensitive on its own can become incriminating when combined with other evidence. Scrubbing _everything_ therefore is the best way to ensure you aren't leaving anything behind. It's also a lot easier to scrub everything than to read over years of post history to see if you've ever shared anything you maybe shouldn't have.

<comment><USER10> I fear we're slowly stepping into paranoia levels of privacy protection. This is my personal belief, I'm aware many people here don't think that way, but here it is: it is literally impossible to live a life in a society without radiating such information all the time. This applies both to physical and digital realms; and as most people spend more and more time with digital services, the two start to blend into one.

So I guess my opinion is: radiating that information is not really an issue, and any problems arising from it are best solved _elsewhere_ , and not by becoming a digital hermit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> The Telegraph, The Sun and the Daily Mail are utter shitstains.

<comment><USER12> We have the media we deserve, for the most part.

<comment><USER13> True I suppose, but the problem is that this guy got the media someone else deserved. The victims and the audience aren't the same groups.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There is a newspaper claiming he's now working with GCHQ. I doubt such information is true, but given what happened to Gareth Williams in similar circumstances, I'd suggest it's egregiously irresponsible for a newspaper to even suggest it given everyone now knows who he is.

<comment><USER15> For those curious as I was: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams)

<comment><USER16> [https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6990kh/til_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/6990kh/til_in_2010_an_mi6_spy_was_found_dead_his_naked/dh4r4vo/)

\--

It's definitely weird, but there's a reason ([https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/25/mi6-gareth- wil...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/25/mi6-gareth-williams- bed)) that they considered this as a real possibility:

> But his former landlady, Jennifer Elliot, told the inquest that three years > before his death, she and her husband had heard Williams call for help at > 1.30am from the annex flat he was renting from them in Cheltenham, where he > worked at GCHQ.

> They let themselves in with the spare key and found the codes expert lying > on his back on the bed, in boxer shorts, with his hands tied to the bed > posts with material so tight it had cut his wrists.

> In a statement read to the inquest, Elliot said she and her husband had both > been in shock. Her husband asked Williams: "What the bloody hell are you > doing?" Williams told them: "I just wanted to see if could get myself free."

> The statement added that he did not appear sexually aroused, and was "very > embarrassed, panicky and apologetic."

> The couple, who never spoke to anyone about the incident, said they > concluded it was "sexual rather than escapology".

<comment><USER17> How do you tie yourself so tightly that it cuts your wrists?

<comment><USER18> Use zip ties and tighten them with your teeth

Tie one hand very tight. Use a loop of rope for the other wrist, and loop it round the wrist too many times squeezing the hand though.

Use unsuitable rope

Use ratchet handcuffs and over tighten.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> What does "dug through a ton of OSINT" mean?

Also can anyone point me to resources on preventing doxing while hosting a website? I want a checklist of things that can possibly leak my identity. For example:

\- Some basic stuff is use whoisguard and don't reuse any existing hosting / cloud infrastructure or even google analytics accounts

\- But for new accounts, does using real credit card information matter? I am not sure how easily a company will give that information up. For example how hard is it to social engineer or get a court order/subpoena for it?

\- Even then you can still be fingerprinted by ip, browser agent, hardware if you ever even log in with the same computer. For example HN certainly knows who my alts are just by checking request logs ip.

\- What about sharing similar coding style / code base? Or even just speech/writing patterns? Is NLP sufficiently advanced to fingerprint you by that yet?

Are some of these too paranoid? I really think there's no way to fully prevent doxing for anyone sufficiently motivated. What's actually good enough in practice?

<comment><USER20> Use Tails or Whonix. Buy Bitcoin with cash via mail on Localbitcoins.com. Depending on your level of paranoia, don't use bills directly withdrawn from the bank/ATM.[1] Be careful to not get fingerprints/hair/traceable writing on the envelope. What I've done is ask someone at the store (buy a card/envelop at CVS or something) to write the address for you. With BTC-via-mail, the only thing you leak is a rough physical location. Running the coins through Monero or something should blind things and render all this moot, but hey just in case?

With anonymized currency, then you're free to start signing up for stuff. If a site doesn't accept Bitcoin, use Localbitcoins.com to buy a prepaid debit card (Visa/Mastercard). If a site insists on a phone number for confirmation, use a darknet market to buy a pre-made Google Voice account. You can't access it over Tor or it'll get blocked, so use darknet markets to rent a Windows client box ($10-20 a month) so you have a "clean" IP and Google won't block you.

Then it's a matter of not giving away your info. You should adopt an entire persona when you're doing anything related to your site. Come up with a backstory (name, location, etc.). Ideally, none of this would matter: You're over Tor and using an entirely separate system for everything related to the site. But from the indictments I've read, it seems like a lot of first steps in finding someone's ID are just going off small hints. The way they write, mentioning the weather, etc. I would assume it to be very effective to fake these things. (For instance, notice a flood in a part of the country. Stay offline during the flood. When you get back on, write a small note that you had to be away due to flooding.)

None of this will protect you from an adversary that can correlate your home- connected-to-Tor times with site-gets-updated-times. But it'll stop people without that access, even if they're willing to fake a subpoena/warrant/etc. to your registrar/hosting provider (easier than you'd think). And hell, it doesn't always take a legal order to get those details; social engineering can do it just fine.

The Whonix wiki goes into lots of details on all this: [https://www.whonix.org/wiki/DoNot](https://www.whonix.org/wiki/DoNot)

1: I asked Wells Fargo and they claimed they don't keep track of serial numbers and have no way to do so, but it seems so trivial I wouldn't believe it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I respect the intent of the article, but I feel that the author completely misjudges the intentions and perspective of the mainstream journalists and their readership. It looks more like a culture clash than malice.

> MalwareTech doesn't give out his name on his Twitter page or blog. There are > no headshots. It's obvious that he just wants to be left alone to get on > with what he enjoys – hacking shit, and figuring out how stuff works.

For a modern mainstream internet user, who sees that everybody goes with their real names and photo (except trolls), it's not obvious.

> stalking other people's Twitter and Instagram accounts

How can reading information that people have voluntarily posted online for everyone to see can be called "stalking"?

> The weird emphasis about his fondness for pizza, and how he works from a > small bedroom in his parents' place? That shows they don't actually respect > him, or what he's accomplished.

To me, it shows just that they were interested to paint a picture of a human being instead of just a username. I feel that HN audience is very used to talking to someone whom they know just by a nickname, with no personal details or information - but for the general public, the concept of "anonymous hacker" is not associated with anything good.

> Why do I need to know his age, and that he enjoys pizza? Why do I need to > know his name, or know what he looks like? Does anyone care that he enjoys > surfing? It adds nothing to the story.

Look at any NYT or Guardian longread about a complicated issue that touches a lot of people - instead of analyzing statistics (as I personally would prefer), they always include an individual story or two, with unrelated personal details, to make the reader feel "connected". Only logical to assume that, while to me, and probably, to HN reader, this is just irritating and distracting, that's what "general public" wants to read about.

<comment><USER22> "for the general public, the concept of "anonymous hacker" is not associated with anything good"

An association that's largely created by these tabloids in the first place.

"that's what "general public" wants to read about"

Maybe, but if that's what's required, they should be requesting an interview with him and only reveal what he agrees to reveal. If he wishes to, that could lead to a more insightful look at a man and his motivations rather than random paragraphs about pizza and surfing.

If he chose not to reveal anything, a responsible journalist would accept that and understand that the man has reasons for wishing to stay anonymous. Not dig into his information and publish it anyway, leading to both him and his friends being needlessly harassed for preventing crimes. At the very least, this could lead to future would-be Samaritans from deploying fixes or publicly detailing their methods.

At least they manages to increase their clicks with some facts rather than just making things up, I suppose.

<comment><USER21> I feel that you're trying to argue against some of my points, but we're not in disagreement.

I'm not saying that the current state of affairs is good or defending it; however, I think that the blame is misplaced and the problem lies in culture clash, not in malice (as often happens with the media).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> The Media likes to have gripping headlines that create celebrities . Presenting a person as a Hero is a tried and true way to do this. Once you do that to a person the hazards of being a celebrity pop up . Doxxing from media and anonymous , people digging up dirt on you etc... it is an unfortunate situation and it's ruined many people's lives .

</comment><comment><USER24> They failed to find creators of wanacry, so they found the guy that didn't hide and made him look like he did something bad.

<comment><USER25> No, they presented him as a hero, because that's what he is, and that's what people want to hear about.

<comment><USER24> Did you happen to read his tweets?

<comment><USER25> Yes, just did. Did you read the articles? Certainly sounds like they're calling him a hero:

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/14/revealed-22-year-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/05/14/revealed-22-year- old-expert-saved-world-ransomware-virus-lives/)

<comment><USER24> Where did that link come from? How could i possibly know about your link if the topic link is different?

<comment><USER25> I assumed by "they" you meant the Telegraph. If not, then please clear up the confusion...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> >> The Telegraph talks a little bit about how he's self-taught, and how he stopped WannaCry by figuring out it had a kill-switch.

The reasearcher's blog (posted on HN earlier) said that although originally he thought it was a kill switch he now thinks it was just a clumsy attempt at detecting whether the worm was runnign inside a sandbox.

Apparently, worms will often do that sort of thing- call out to an unregistered domain to check whether they get a response indicating that they're not really connected to the internet. Except the ones that do it right call out to some random domains and this one had it hard-coded (either because the creator of the worm was a numpty or because they forgot it) (and therefore, a numpty).

So it probably wasn't a kill-switch in the sense of a failsafe, as it was reported in the press.

</comment><comment><USER25> >To the hacks at The Telegraph, MalwareTech will always be some sad basement- dwelling hacker nerd.

No, actually. They're showing that he fits into the archetypical British bedroom hacker/programmer genius, which is very highly respected in the UK, and produced the likes of Matthew Smith, David Braben, etc. It looks like the author of this article wasn't around in the 80s, so perhaps he's not familiar with this history.

 _edit_ I fit into this category myself, and I'm not offended at all.

</comment><comment><USER27> I've had my shit doxxed by the media before, but fortunate enough they were kind enough to redact information on request. It was a very quick turn-around

<comment><USER28> Story?

<comment><USER27> Just a simple internet website prank that went viral with fake news. Was about three years ago now

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I saw that at the weekend. The guy did a good thing and obviously didn't want his name out there.

It was a pretty shitty thing to do.

</comment><comment><USER30> I hope instead of focusing on the doxing, people focus on employing and protecting him from threats. You can't count on keeping a secret forever.

</comment><comment><USER31> If we think about it, this is not much different than shouting publicly the name of a journalist infiltrated in a drug cartel. Terrible. Journalists should know better the game and what is at stake here.

</comment><comment><USER32> Got to love the news! They just love throwing anyone under the bus..

<comment><USER33> This was mostly Murdoch's rags, which, unfortunately, many folks can't distinguish from actual newspapers.

<comment><USER29> It was the Sun, the Telegraph and the Daily Mail. Only on of those belongs to Murdoch.

<comment><USER34> A better way to put it would be to say all of the UK tabloid papers (the Mirror was also mentioned in the article).

Tabloid journalism doesn't exactly have a stellar history of responsibility. Unfortunately this sells for some reason.

<comment><USER35> Is the Telegraph really a tabloid? It's hardly on the same scale as the others presented here (and in the article).

<comment><USER34> The Telegraph is a broadsheet, yes.

However, I've seen some rumblings on the Internet that it used to be high quality journalism, but lately it had been going more downmarket of late. This is "Internet opinion" of course, so I'm not sure what the real truth is. That being said, if they are engaging in tabloid-style stunts like this these day, this would sort of confirm what I've read.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> While perhaps (probably?) all the criticism of the papers is justified I'd note that the subject of the doxing doesn't seem very concerned about it at all.

</comment><comment><USER37> I agree with this article, but though I am no expert in this topic I do wonder how much the wannacry perpetrators would actually go after this guy. Consider:

1\. The fact that it was disabled so trivially was ultimately their own fault.

2\. As we have seen, it was easy enough for them to change the logic to remove the web request on the nonexistent domain and start spreading again.

3\. Retaliation would not be without cost and risk. Acting on #2 instead is a less costly, less risky action.

</comment><comment><USER38> they came to the wrong conclusion that someone who bought a kill switch domain, would have been one of the hackers. when it fact the kill switch was firewall check (look for 502 rather than 404) and the person who bought the domain kill switched it for everyone.

Sucky journalism strikes again.

<comment><USER39> Where did you come to the conclusion that they think he was one of the hackers? Neither the link, nor the Telegraph article said anything like that AFAIK.

<comment><USER38> you know the media, they'll let the reader make the conclusion.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> They may not use the term "doxxed" lightly, but they also don't provide a definition for it. I have no idea what it means. I guess it means "give credit by providing the name." Maybe?

<comment><USER41> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doxing)

<comment><USER40> Ah - while it's technically slang, it is defined in the dictionary - [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dox](https://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/dox)

My bad!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Despite all the claims of "major cyber-attack", what I see here was a virus that infected the entire British NHS, but otherwise had very little impact.

</comment><comment><USER43> maybe it's some sort of "parallel construction" payback motive

</comment><comment><USER44> "no good deed goes unpunished"</comment>